Why I have trouble taking global warming alarmists seriously

When someone opens a conversation with a lie it’s difficult to take anything else they have to say seriously. Global warming alarmists open their arguments by lying and go on from there.

Alarmists will start their conversations by pointing out that the earth has warmed by .6 degrees in the last 120 years. Next they will show you that the earths CO2 level has risen over the same time frame. Finally they will speak of the horrific implications if temperatures continue to rise because of this. If you ask what is the cause they will point to fossil fuels being burnt.

The above shows how you can take true statements combine them together and tell a very convincing lie.

Yes Alarmists are telling the truth about the rise in temperature. What they don’t tell you is that even the research they use doesn’t say this all from mankind. Their figures show 1/3 of the increase came from the sun. That’s their numbers. So with their opener they are misleading you into thinking of the total change in the earth’s temperature as being caused by man.

Yes the alarmists are telling the truth about the rise in CO2 over the same time frame. What they don’t tell you is that while CO2 has consistently risen over the time in question, temperature has not. This is not a summer to winter decline, this involves 30 year periods of decline while CO2 was increasing. One such period of decline triggered doom and gloom scenarios of a new ice age.

The last piece of their argument, when they speak of their horrible projections of the future they never mention it has been just as warm in the past. That the warm periods, have been times of great human prosperity not tragedy. Warmer climates providing better and more predictable crop yields, ice free harbors, and reduce the death rate from the cold. (England last year had over 20,000 cold related deaths; those people can no longer be concerned about global warming).

There is considerable speculation about why this agenda is being promoted. From the political side the reasons are obvious. We are talking about new layers of governmental control and new opportunities for government corruption. Example, California has sought to outlaw the incandescent bulb. They are also talking about carbon trading schemes, a certain windfall for those politically connected enough to create the exchanges.

mainly. Enhanced sense based on the past, science and humility are other reasons. Remember the 70s ice age scare? Mark Twain said it best when he spoke of how everyone talks about the weather but no one dies anything about it.

Now there are two camps in the MMGW Church: The fundamentalists that say we can't do anything about it (save move to higher ground I suppose, which is what man has been doing since he fist walked the earth) and the protestants, who think if western man, esp. USA man would just liquefy its assets and join much of Africa in the Stone age, or at least join Europe in a socialist utopia with angry Muslim overlay, we can stop MMGW even if China and India become the new USA's sans freedom and/or Elvis.

I believe there is a third group, which just may be the largest. This sect is comprised mostly of lemmings and dupes. (That may have too much of a negative tone – I do believe most of them are good intentioned.) For the most part these people believe in conservation and being good stewards of our environment but mistakenly also believe that the MMGW faith is the logical and worthy extension of that belief.

with these kooks is how he will say, yes, we talked about global warming, and I am for energy conservation for the purpose of energy independence and less pollution, never acknowledging warming as being connected. He is so sweet to save the feelings of the kooks face to face. Very diplomatic. Especially when it involves such fragile egos as Pelosi's and that German gal.

I just hope the next president smacks them down in the presser afterwards.

The idea that because you are knowledgeable you should rule. This is a common occupational hazard amongst scientists in general some fields more than others. Robert Oppenheimer was a prime example. The man felt because he understood the manufacture of the bomb this translated into understanding its political and defense implications.

With the climatologists you have the would be philosopher kings trying to dictate how the world economy should be run. The sad part is that if their agendas ever come to fruition they will find the real kings are and were the people using them to their own purposes.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

These people think that because they have specific knowledge that they should be the sole interpreters of knowledge in the area.

I think in too many ways our society has proclaimed scientists to be the new religious leaders of our secular society, and we often forget that scientists are just as fallible as any other group of humans (and just as power hungry, just as greedy and just as wed to their own points of view).

It's not the presentation and vigorous debate about scientific facts and analysis that concerns me. I have a lot of reasons to believe that the normal processes of (non-anonymous!) peer review tend to self-correct errors, given enough time.

I'm confident that each of these men possesses scientific credentials of the highest order in their respective fields -- certainly much better than mine will ever be. The University of Chicago is an A-1 Research university and is one of the most deservedly prestigious institutions of higher learning in the world. And yet, if you look at Dr. Pierrehumbert's web pages, you'll also find that he is an unapologetic political partisan who is to this moment hosting a disparaging "Bush Watch" website using the geosciences server network at the U. of C. Hardly an unbiased academic.

In addition, these two professors have collaborated on a book and a core-curriculum course for non-science majors at the U. of C. that makes the case for AWG. Which means that some of the best and brightest, upper 1/2 of 1% of American undergraduate non-science majors, who will undoubtedly go on in their careers to influence policy and shape the world, are learning the "truth" of AWG as a part of courses that they are required to take in order to receive an undergraduate degree.

In the meantime, people who question researchers like Pierrehumbert and Archer are given short shrift by the media, portrayed as reactionary quacks, and now, as "Holocaust Deniers" and "War Criminals."

It's very difficult to look at that situation and not feel as though the "fix" is in on anthropogenic global warming, and that it has as much to do with pure, naked politics as it does science or scientific "consensus."

in most science circles there is debate, it is the lack of toleration for the debate that is concerning. A sort of "if you don't agree, you don't get to be part of the club" mentality.

In the end it stifles debate, and I also think it harms science, because it turns one POV as the established fact, and when something has become established, a tendancy to ignore evidence to the contrary develops.

And I've seen it before, among people who often consider themselves to be too smart and too clear-minded to be "biased."

It doesn't necessarily have to be "overt" either -- it's a kind of subtle social pressure, an "in-crowd" sort of mentality that like it or not, many academics crave just as much as the rest of us "mere mortals." In its most egregious forms it results in people like atmospheric scientists from MIT being lumped in with Holocaust Deniers and War Criminals.

I know Al Gore doesn't particularly mind when the organized Left attacks Americans and tries to destroy their economy. But does he have any moral concern for why that is happening when he goes and tells the public his "most terrifying" and "catastrophic" tales? And yet, that's what seems to be happening. He's making it happen. He's pouring fuel on the fire to encourage it to happen. Why is this impulse to believe in the doomsaying prophesy so powerful? I can come up with a few reasons, but I'll leave them for later.

is to seamlesly obfuscate and confuse two very different things.
AGW promoters do exactly that.
Think of that sparrow burp movie of goreon: At the end he can only promote people to buy efficient light bulbs. And then he drives off in his limo.
And that passes for a great expose in today's dialogue.
'Inconvenient truth' only serves to inflame the public opinion and manipulate it like a certain book in the 1920's did in Germany.

so that it is difficult to take anything coming out of most of academia, the press and Hollywood seriously. For the left who controls the above, excellence at one's craft and the searchfor truth long ago took a back seat to gathering data that seems to back one's political agenda.

Aren't all these so-called top people in their scientific field aware that the top people in the NEA astronomy field say that we will experience an ELE within the next seven years?
who ya gonna believe?
Me? I believe Iran will use a nuke on a populated area before Manhattan loses 50 feet of shore line to MMGW.

My one question that I always ask any global warming alarmist, and a question I have never gotten an answer too, is, "If man and CO2 emissions are the cause of global warming, how do you explain the global warming that occurred in the middle ages?"

It is fully believed to have occurred from 1000 AD to 1400 AD. During this period, the weather was so warm, the Vikings settled Greenland, Iceland, and northern North America. There records confirm the warmer weather during this period.

The alarmist answer by saying it only happened in Europe and didn't happen in the rest of the world. Then I respond by asking them if the Chinese lived in Europe during that period, because ancient Chinese naval records show them sailing an ice free arctic ocean during this same period.

I have noticed that as long as the middle ages warming period exists, they cannot prove man made global warming today. So, all you see is the same alarmists doing everything they can to marginalize or dismiss the middle ages warming period. However, they can't do it. They still try though.

I noticed by way of Drudge Report that Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman has a column that says that "global warming" deniers are the same as holocaust deniers.

One reason is that while poles are melting and polar bears are swimming between ice floes, American politics has remained polarized. There are astonishing gaps between Republican science and Democratic science. Try these numbers: Only 23 percent of college-educated Republicans believe the warming is due to humans, while 75 percent of college-educated Democrats believe it

Isn't that special?

Wubbies World - The odds of hitting your target go up dramatically when you actually aim for it!

Your examples of past warming are no different than people who point to melting glaciers as evidence of global warming today.

Anecdotal evidence of warming, or cooling, does not equate to evidence of global warming or cooling.

In 1816 much of the continental United States experienced snow falling in July. Was this evidence of a global cooling trend? Using your reasoning, yes. However the ACTUAL cause of the cooling was a volcanic eruption in Indonesia that emitted a very high level of sulfur dioxide into the air.

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy

There is a big difference between the evidence gathered showing worldwide warming and the freak year of 1816, the year with no summer.
There are growing records, crop records, tree rings, etc. to support the past warming and the mini-ice age that followed.
REmemebr: the AGW promoters are out to marginalize and shut down every voice of doubt, dissent, skepticism, etc.
They have taxes to raise. Their hubris is that raising those taxes will provide management of the climate.

my point was regarding Wubbies World using anecdotal evidence to make conclusions.

However even if we were to accept that the earth warmed from 800 to 1300 and then cooled, that really has no bearing on today's AGW claims.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that the Earth's temperature remains year over year. Of course it fluctuates. The concern regarding AGW is that the rate of temperature change is well above normal transitional rates and that this could cause severe problems for mankind.

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy

My point was not to prove or disprove global warming. My point was to prove that the world weather patterns fluctuate naturally. Man has nothing to do with that fluctuation. My point as an argument is to ask:

How is the current weather patterns (warming temperatures) not natural fluctuations? I am attempting to prove that there is no evidence to validate the claim of man's ability to alter the fluctuating patterns.

Wubbies World - The odds of hitting your target go up dramatically when you actually aim for it!

Theres a fair amount of work that says we are due for a cooling period again. I am not saying it is correct. I am not saying its incorrect. If it is and we try to cool things down we will do great damage.

Now even assuming that what is being said about the direction and cause of the change is correct, its not undesirable. I have no trouble with milder summers and winters at a slightly higher average temperature. Boo Hoo Greenland will be a frontier again.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

I agree that we must be cautious in how we handle the issue of climate change(I use this term intentionally in this case). Knee jerk reactions are rarely the best course and most likely that is true here as well.

But I do think that drastic change in our climate could cause severe problems for mankind. I fear that if our climate continues to change so rapidly or even accelerates the rate of change we could see catastrophic weather patterns. Hyercanes or severe shifts in climate could ensue causing severe hardship and/or death to millions or even billions of people.

When the rate of change subsides I am certain that mankind will adapt and thrive in the new climates. But that doesn't mean that countless people won't suffer during the transition.

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy

Another 2 or 3 degrees isn't even beginning to hit drastic.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

This is from the UN Model
CO2 rf = f * ln([CO2]/[CO2]prein)/ln(2) f=3.74 W/m2 (3.74
So to get our 2 degrees we need a heck of a lot more co2 than we have now. Thats in doublings to get that radiative forcing from co2.

Second we have more than that swing year to year. Look at the data plot Pliny likes to use. We have had more than 2 degrees shift from year to year.

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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

But that also means you have no way to make it a compelling possibility. It's also a very real possibility that an asteroid will wipe out life on earth in the next 100 years, but I'm not changing my behavior because of it. As real as they are, neither possibility has a convincingly quantifiable probability. And neither one is likely to be more than infinitesimally probable.

as of now, over 7 billion, will die within the next 120 years, whether or not the Earth cools or warms, and whether or not we reject Chevrolet and voluntarily return to the Stone Age waiting for the appearance of the God of Clean Energy as we die more rapidly of diseases related to greater exposure to horse feces, rats and smoke frorm wood burning fireplaces.

Which is surprising and disappointing.
My point is this:
Pre-human tech earth had temperatures that fluctuated plenty. At least as much as they do now.
There were mechanisms that drove those changes then. Those mechanisms have not gone away. To focus on the projections and assumptions of today's current climate obsession while not explaining what drove the past is totally bogus.
By the way, except for projections and assumptions, AGW has nothing to offer to support their doomsday cult dogma.

to make their case that *this* time the climate is changing spectacularly fast is based on massaged data, rewritten history, and alarmist claims. These are the people who told us, without any science at all, that Katrin was an AGW hurricane. And they followed up this bs with the prediction that last year was to be an even more active hurricane season.
The nail in the coffin of their credibility was when I read that the IPCC report summary and conclusion was already written and that the science would be edited to fit.
Thanks, but no thanks.

You write a diary claiming, with absolutely no evidence, that the AGW "alarmists" are lying.

And then you throw out wild speculation linking AGW "alarmists" to various purely personal agendas, again without any evidence.

You know what my biggest problem with the anti-AGW trivializers? That they bring in political points EVERY TIME they talk about the subject. The discussion can never be just about the science, or lack thereof, behind AGW. There is always reference to the politics of AGW.

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy

This afternoon I caught a commercial promoting the global warming agenda. I forget the exact organization but I'll describe it.

A man is standing on traintracks and a train is heading at him. He says some people claim in 30 years the effects of global warming will be irreversible whats that to me ? Then he steps aside leaving a little girl on the tracks.

Irreversible sir ?? Harmful as getting hit by a train ??

As to linking people to agendas look at what the proposed solutions are and what their consequences are. They link themselves to the agenda. Is it a shock to you that ADM supports alternative fuels ? GE is four square behind replacing powerplants.

If you have not seen what I have described you have either not been paying attention or just not wanting to.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

But, like the alarmists, you are using specific data points to further YOUR agenda.

There are MANY possible ways to combat AGW. Some of them are innocuous. Some of them are traumatic. If you wish to focus on the traumatic simply because that furthers your agenda, then you are no different than the alarmists.

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy

Plus some of the so called solutions aren't. I support alternative fuels like ethanol and biodiesel but they will not take one gram of greenhouse gases out of the air. All they will do is take carbon currently in the soil and reintroduce into the atmosphere in a new cycle.

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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

It has not ended and is still ongoing. Ask Exxon Mobile who is being asked not to fund any research skeptical of AGW. Ask the senators that are asking people who have published work skeptical of the scenario to come have a talk with them before testifying before congress.

As to limiting noxious gasses, well the AGW proponents use sulfur emissions to explain the mid century temp dip. Make of that what you will.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

ExxonMobil is a publicly traded company that needs to worry about their image. It certainly appears unseemly, at least to some, for a company that makes it's money off of fossil fuels to fund research that is specifically geared at dismissing AGW. I feel no pity for them.

I don't know what you are talking about regarding the Senators. However it should be noted that Senators speak solely on political terms and are completely indifferent, and largely ignorant, of the science of AGW.

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy

I have a great deal of trouble taking them seriously. I especially have trouble when they are going around with their hands over their ears yelling " I can't hear you".
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

"don't know what you are talking about regarding the Senators. However it should be noted that Senators speak solely on political terms and are completely indifferent, and largely ignorant, of the science of AGW".

In fact, one of the senators mentioned in the article is often mentioned, by the leftists, as being knowledgeable about a certain subject; however if I pointed out the subject, I would be accused of threadjack. To avoid that, I'll just point out that leaving out the last 5 words, of your quoted sentence, would be appropriate.

>>You know what my biggest problem with the anti-AGW trivializers? That they bring in political points EVERY TIME they talk about the subject. The discussion can never be just about the science, or lack thereof, behind AGW. There is always reference to the politics of AGW.

If you followed the debate, I find it difficult to believe you could make such a statement.

While sceptics of AGW sometimes resort to political arguments it is promoters of the theory who invariably do, and generally by claiming a moral superiority. Belief in AGW is not just correct and beyond question - which means that it is not science, of course - but it is morally right too. Only evil people question it.

While sceptics of AGW sometimes resort to political arguments it is promoters of the theory who invariably do, and generally by claiming a moral superiority. Belief in AGW is not just correct and beyond question - which means that it is not science, of course - but it is morally right too. Only evil people question it.

Should I provide a list of research papers that support the theory of AGW, that make no mention to political ramifications whatsoever?

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy

I was responding in kind to your absurd claim that "every time" AGW sceptics make a point they resort to politics instead of science, and you have yet to provide a single example of that, let alone evidence that no counter examples exist.

Finding no reference to politics in a paper paper supporting AGW does not mean it is absent, of course. The vast bulk of this research is commissioned by governments. And I am sure you have noticed that the scientists who accept this money nearly always manage to conclude that whichever arm of government commissioned the research needs more powers and more funds to deal with the problem.

However, I am not willing to go out on a limb and claim that there are no examples of poltics-free research supporting AGW. Perhaps you should withdraw your claim that there are no examples of politics-free scepticism.

Then why is the IPCC being edited by political and governmental groups?
The evidence is all over the place, but the AGW faithful suppress it or ignore it.
Remeber which side in this wants to strip AGW skeptics of their credentials. Remember which side is comparingthe other to Holocaust deniers.
To toss at the skeptics that they are too political in this cimate is to beg the question "too political in comparison to who?"
The science against the AGW promoters - the phony hockey stick, the rewrite of climate history; the ridiculous projections about pollutant increase; the failure of AGW models to work in the past; the inability of AGW promoters to predict anything that happens; the increasing ice mass of Antarctica; the incresing ice mass of Greenland; the global cooling since 1998; etc.
As the world faces an incredibly cool January February period, with temperaturesin tropical Cambodia in the 40'soF, I think that since AGW promtoers are constantly screeching about every warm summer being *proof* of AGW, then trhey had best get something better than calling this time 'part of AGW' to keep their game going.

More than half of the eastern seaboard, including half of the State of South Carolina, was under the Atlantic Ocean before Man, much less Chevrolet, occupied Planet Earth.

I'll come to this issue ignoring the politics of the MMGW's and the lack of human observers of cycles that are eons long.

No MMGW disciple has addressed these points I have been making here for over a year. Not one.

But I do take weather and climate seriously. When it rains, hurricanes or tornados, I seek shelter, and I don't wade too far out into the Ocean. If the Atlantic were to once again threaten Hilton Head, I'll head for the Hills!

Recent temperature rises are substantial, and there are various possible explanations. One that stands out is AGW, partly because a rise on that basis was very widely predicted about thirty years ago, and the temperature seems to have followed the script. But sure, there are other things going on. I don't think it helps in getting to the truth to characterise those who favour the majority (and very reasonable) interpretation as liars.

Solar variations are another possible cause. I spoke of this in my recent diary. I think your statement

Their figures show 1/3 of the increase came from the sun. That’s their numbers.

comes from Vierek, of NOAA, who is a solar warming supporter who you originally introduced into the conversation. But what he actually said was (and I linked it there)

Many scientists find that these correlations are convincing evidence that the sun has contributed to the global warming of the 20th century. Some say that as much as 1/3 of the global warming may be the result of an increase in solar energy.

You've stretched it a lot. Well, OK, whatever. But is doesn't help to then say that those who don't agree with the stretched version are telling lies.

That I'm a conscientious supporter of alternative energy resources. I don't believe in widespread windpower, and I'm not going to sit and watch New York City try to construct terrestrial solar towers to satisfy their unprecedented power demands.

I tend to believe the "problem" is a red herring, and that the only reason policy mavens are making it into such a political issue is for their own reasons, primarily taxation.

Let's talk about France, for instance. They already generate nearly 4/5ths of their electricity through nuclear power. They're already "carbon clean." And they are the first nation to host an experimental fusion reactor, when most of the research has already been done in the United States.

In France, unlike in America, nuclear energy is accepted, even popular. Everybody I spoke to in Civaux loves the fact their region was chosen. The nuclear plant has brought jobs and prosperity to the area. Nobody I spoke to, nobody, expressed any fear. From the village school teacher, Rene Barc, to the patron of the Cafe de Sport bar, Valerie Turbeau, any traces of doubt they might have had have faded as they have come to know plant workers, visited the reactor site and thought about the benefits of being part of France's nuclear energy effort.

There is a question about why nuclear power is embraced in France but not here in the United States. Some people say that the French know how to do the science better. Some people claim that France is a much smaller country. Other people point out that nuclear power in America has been virtually stillborn since Jane Fonda appeared in the China Syndrome and Jimmy Carter imposed his moratorium on breeder reactors, the two of which combined to subvert the United States in terms of nuclear power for the past three decades.

By your numbers you introduced Pliny the forcing from CO2 is 2 watts/square meter. The change in total solar irradiance in the same time period is on the order of 1% or 13.6 watts. Take that from circular to spherical you get 3.4 watts / square meter if you use a lower estimate of .6% solar increase you still get 2 watts/ square meter.

Even using the 1/3 figure which is below the 35% sited in the IPCC you still get .4 degrees per century due to man. Sooner or later the sun is going to exit its current solar maximum (currently called the modern maximum) at which point that will be offsetting temperature increases.

It is very much a lie to leave people with the impression that 100% of global warming is caused by man.

Will not allow any significant changes in the suns power output, let alone at the level they include to make the historical record match. In my day we called that fudging.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

I don't know where you get the 1% change from. As I mentioned in an earlier thread, there is actually no measured sustained increase in solar radiation over any time period. There is only an oscillation over the 11-year sunspot cycle observed by satellite in the last thirty years, with no net gain. There is an inference that solar radiation might have been less a century ago, when there were fewer sunspots, but I don't know of any estimates as high as 1%.

I've mentioned the qualitative difference that concerns me. We've every reason to believe that solar fluctuations will come and go with no permanent effect; they have been around for a long time. That 2 W/m2 heat inflow from new greenhouse gases will, unless something is done, just get bigger and bigger.

in your thread, using C14 as a proxy.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

But I've heard responsible people say exactly the opposite in terms of albedo, meaning that we could go through a ten year AWG warming period that would cause more water vapor to form clouds in the atomsphere and then that would reflect more sunlight and cause the earth to cool rapidly.

I do notice that more people are worried about C02 concentrations these days than they seem to be concerned about atomspheric albedo effects.

And you're being a little disingenuous when you say "We've every reason to believe that solar fluctuations will come and go with no permanent effect; they have been around for a long time." True enough, but if they are a significant component of global warming *right now* in the political present, isn't it terribly disingenuous to discount their effects? People like Al Gore haven't been talking about carbon cap and trade schemes throughout the history of solar flux variations, you'll have to grant. And actually, he's consciously ignoring them right now in order to focus on what I believe is the only thing he *can* control: the cash cow of carbon taxation.

I mentioned cloud albedo in my diary. Extra water vapor heats the atmosphere through a greenhouse effect, but makes more clouds, which has a cooling effect. Cloud formation is hard to predict, and can only be done through global modelling. The possibilities are:
1. Cloud wins - negative feedback. This is fairly good news, the earth gets a bit warmer and a lot cloudier. It doesn't get colder - negative feedback doesn't work like that.
2. Greenhouse wins, and the CO2 effect is amplified - positive feedback. This seems to be the mainstream view at the moment, based on modelling. It fits with what we now know of Ice Age history (the instability, not the CO2 forcing, which is new).
3. Greenhouse effect wins by a lot, leading to thermal runaway. With moderate positive feedback, you might find that every ton of water evaporated by CO2 effect causes another half ton to be evaporated by its own greenhouse effect, which evaporates another quarter ton, and so on until you have doubled the effect. But if each ton retains enough heat to evaporate more than a ton, you get the equivalent of a chain reaction - thermal runaway - a planetary disaster. The Earth has obviously never been in that region before, and I hope we are a long way away from it.

There is no certain answer, but the stakes are high.

On solar flux and the present, I don't think I am being disingenuous, because I don't think I have done any discounting. Although, speaking of the present, it is actually true that in the last thirty years where we have actual readings, solar flux hasn't increased overall. For my part, in my other diary I tried to emphasise that the really convincing part of the argument is that for the existence of a sustained heat inflow. The temperature increase is supportive.

between minima, and it's a small sample (2). It's hard to see much change overall. Anyway, as I say, I for one have never denied the (smallish) possible role of solar changes. I discussed it at some length in my recent diary. I just don't see it as bearing strongly on the central argument.

plots actually represent solar radiation, at least in its heating frequency ranges. The two isotopes, of beryllium and carbon, are created by cosmic rays, which are plentiful during sunspot maxima. So they are proxies for sunspot numbers. A rise in thermal radiation has been argued to be associated with sunspots, but this is on a short data base (about 30 years) involving just three cycles of oscillation.

http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=91
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Doesn't want anyone to even *talk* about the Sun except to say that we need draconian restrictions and taxes on carbon to promote terrestrial solar. Beyond that, as far as I know, he just doesn't mention the sun, because he can't control it.

And we are in the audience. While the great minds like algore are teaching us and telling us how get climate, off to stage right, to love us again.
Only the joke is on the great minds. They think they are engaged in a dialogue that will influence climate.
Climate is not going to listen, is not listening, and will not ever listen.
The great minds think they are conversing with nature. They are only muttering to themselves in a wordy soliloquy.

He thinks we could have a thermal runaway.
He actually believes our Hummers could fry the planet.
Pliny talks nice and calm, but that is not becuase he actually understands anything.
Thermal runaway is the most extreme fundie version of AGW. It is the climatology version of 6 literal 24 days of creation. Anyone who thinks Earth can become Venus knows nothing of Venus, and nothing of climate and nothing of history on earth.
pliny is just a nice cut-n-paste guy.
Pliny is what happens when someone actually thinks algore is serious, and watches IT 100 times or so.

I mean his opinion on thermal runaway.
To make that work you'd have to dispose of the hydrogen in the oceans and add 80 times the amount of atmospheric gases we have now.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Actually, I haven't seen Gore's movie even once. I was responding on clouds and albedo, and trying to calmly explain feedback involving water vapor, and I'll do it again.

Water (liquid and vapor) and heat radiation form a feedback system. Heat evaporates water, and water as vapor traps heat, but if it condenses as cloud, reflects heat. The first effect is positive feedback, the second negative. The nett result could be positive or negative. Negative would be good, but there are reasons to think that it is positive, which tends to enhance instabilities. Many people believe this is behind the patterns you see in those longterm heat and CO2 plots associated with Ice Ages.

Positive feedback is familiar from sound PA systems. A little of it makes voices sound funny and unsteady. Too much and you get a horrible noise from uncontrolled oscillation. In elec eng terms, that's when the loop gain exceeds one.

I don't want to hype the issue of thermal runaway. It does seem to have happened to Venus. It hasn't happened here, and I have no wish to make a case that it will. But it is a possibility to think about in any feedback system, and its effects would be bad.

seeing as the earth was between 10 and 30 degrees warmer during the permian era, probably not. Of course thats the great thing about the geological record it cuts out the need to speculate.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Venus did not happen becuase of runaway greenhouse.
Venus is completely differnt from the Earth. Its rotation means its days are months long. Its lack of plate tectonics means it undergoes ~ 300MY planetary crustal melt to release internal heat. Its atmosphere is dense enough to float a lead zepplin, until it melts. It has no oceans, and H2O is a trace component.
It is incredibly irresponsible to even suggest Earth could become Venus, and calling the Venusian climate the result of runaway anything is to misguide people.
When Sagan was pitching 'nuclear winter' to scare the west into disarming he would pull ridiculous claims out of his head to try to support his idea. When he actually made claims about how it would occur due to Iraqi burning of Kuwaiti oil wells, reality sank his 'theory'. It had as nearly as much scientific hype behind it then as AGW does now.
The only result of nuclear winter was to tarnish the reputation of Sagan
Of course AGW promoters are going to pretend they never made prior predictions that were proven to be laughably wrong.

Well, I don't have much stake in the climate of Venus. I noted this part of the Wikipedia article on the planet:

Studies have suggested that several billion years ago Venus' atmosphere was much more like Earth's than it is now, and that there were probably substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface, but a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere.

If I may be so glib as to call you that. And there's a question there also: since AWG can be (in your view) attributed both to the increasing concentration of C02 and the putative rise in water vapor in the atmosphere, and the 2W/m^2 rise in solar flux that you've talked about so fluently, why not just cut back on the solar flux?

The Earth's surface occupies an almost invisibly small angle of space when seen from the Sun. So why not selectively control the solar flux from the L1 Lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun? It couldn't be any harder than making the entire world economy suffer for the next 30 years.

more or less. I actually commented on this in an earlier thread. There are various schemes proposed for reducing solar input - some maybe a bit simpler, if not as clean. We can recover nett thermal balance that way. But we aren't back to where we started - there is just less sunlight. That is bad news for everything that depends on photosynthesis - eg agriculture.

There is another issue too. There are big flows of heat within the Earth environment, inducing all sorts of winds and currents (even relating to hurricanes). You'd need to be very careful to not induce much bigger heat flows with artificial solar blocks.

I think everyone in the world, especially those in governmental offices, need to be incredibly careful about what they propose as remdies for this putative "catastrophe."

My preferred options would be to make several wise policy choices:

1) Decrease the amount of electricity that is needed by buildings in large urban areas by requiring that they adhere to the latest codes of design in terms of their windows and their roofs.

2) Take the blocks out from the American nuclear power industry and actively encourage the construction of new nuclear reactors.

3) Encourage people through direct tax incentives to purchase more fuel-efficient cars. If you buy a car that gets 35 MPG instead of one that gets 18 MPG, you get a $5,000 tax writeoff, for example.

4) Stop pretending that terrestrial solar and wind power are the real alternatives. Los Alamos National Laboratory and the people who can Do the Math have known for years that there are only a few real alternative energy technologies: thermonuclear fusion, fission, and exoatmospheric solar, and now possibly MIT-esque geothermal. Start funding those technologies as vigorously as we funded weapons development during the Cold War.

5) Cut the legs out from under the anti-nuclear people in this country by opening Yucca Mountain and providing American utilities a place to put the waste other than in ponds sitting right out side of their facilities.

6) Give up the hypocrisy that the world needs less energy, more expensively. It needs MORE energy, less expensively.

7) Stop talking in the blogosphere and in Hollywood as though the United Nations is going to solve this problem for the world. It is not. It is a political body, not a scientific body.

8) Embrace alternative forms of energy, including solar towers, where they are economically feasible -- but WITHOUT artificially creating a monopoly money system that makes them so.

9) Continue much more aggressively to show that carbon sequestration on a large scale can work. Coal is our most important energy resource and is likely to be so for a long time. We can make it much cleaner without throwing the baby out with the bath water.

10) Stop thinking that everyone is going to die. We're only going to die if we prevent ourselves from exploring the dozens of options that are at our fingertips.

I'm right with you. I've been around enough people who make their livings off government funds. I have seen the encultured groupthink that goes on, especially when new avenues to income guarantee and/or institutional power undergird analyses and processes. Perhaps, if we really want to delve into truths, we need to amend the constitution to create a "separation of science and state."

I consider it likely that both conscious and unconscious groupthink fuels the science on this; that's why I shun getting caught up discussions of scientific minutiae. It's likely that climate research grant applications describe studies that "fit" the rampant meme: Science that might look for variables counter to the prevailing "wisdom" usually are not funded, and when they are funded the money is not at levels that can compete with the sort of funding-enriched memetics that result in productions like "An Inconvenient Truth." (By the way, I see a lot of similarity in tone and method between Gore's drivel and "Reefer Madness")

Concurrently, it is absurd for those who do not have a background in climate science to wax pedantically about the science of global warming. There is too much study and too much data for anyone not immersed in it to present it clearly; there are too many who might present it clearly who are co-opted by the meme and the agenda of global warming; and, there is not yet nearly enough science to "prove" a danged thing about APG. There is too much that nobody understands yet (ocean currents, solar pattern influence, magnetic fields, etc.) for global warming alarmists to be taken seriously. Anyone who states "we are 90% certain" without qualifying their certainty by stating truths about scientific validity when there are myriad unknown variables is misleading at best.

I have no doubt that in the end, global warming will be proved to be the largest successful induction of group hysteria that has ever been perpetrated. Where there is a dearth of scientific proof, we can always count on there being plenty enough of scientific maybes for politics to drive all sorts of aberrant agendas.

As I witness the ongoing recruitment of the lemmings, I find myself trying to devise a way to apply the EPR Paradox to it. If there ever was a case in which the observers certainly influence outcomes of experimentation, it can be found in contemporary climate science.

As I keep saying, once this one is burned out (just like global cooling), there will be the next. Bank on it.

They think you can manage the climate.
You start screwing with stuff on a global scale and you will do for Earth what the USSR clowns did for the Caspian Sea.
The real cost of algore and the rest of the con artists pushing AGW so cynically will not just be pointless policies that do nothign for the climate but maybe clean up the environement some. Some sincere true believer will try to manage the climate.
The hubris of AGW in thinking that we ahve significantly impacted the climate is only matched by the ignorance of those who actually beleive it.

But besides that, pliny, you ignroed my points about the climatologists' last great prediction, the great ice age of 1976.
I partied a lot in the 1970's, and I even danced disco. But I don't think I snoozed through the ice age they predicted.
Climatologists also predicted 2006 would be a big time hurricane year. They even climed Katrina was AGW caused.
Heck, clinton even claimed in May 2006 that tsunamis were caused by AGW.
So stop regurgitating the AGW talking points and engage.
The only more annoying than your side's ham handed attempts to censor people who disagree is your inability to admit that there are incredible holes in your claims.

I recall learning about it-it was taught in science, I remember watching movies about it, and I remember watching one in social studies that was all about the future doom and gloom with a coming ice age and a massive population boom-so if the cold didn't kill us starvation was going to.

Honestly, I think that is the one thing that bothers me about the whole global warming argument-it comes packed with doom and gloom predicted for 30, 50 or more years down the road. Well, I might swallow global warming, if that ice age had come.

I think there is a place to argue for sound environmental policy. Clean air is nice to breath, clean water is nice to drink, and it is nice to have some open spaces to hike, fish or whatever. Why not just make this argument instead of the whole "if we don't do it now we will all be dead in 50 years!!!" crap?

through the 70's, and remained conscious. In fact I at times worked (as a junior mathematician) for a scientific organisation who did atmospheric research, with a special duty to advise farmers of what may lie ahead. Right through the mid to late 70's all our predictions where based on greenhouse warming, based on rising CO2. That was despite the temperature history being unclear, and at that stage no data for inferring pre-1850 temperatures. A huge urban myth is being propagated here on the basis of two news magazine articles, which is surprising considering the general opinion of the MSM.

Do you have an example of a climatologist predicting 2006 would be a big hurricane year? Actually, there were very big and damaging hurricanes in China and Australia. America was affected by a strong El Nino, which had the effect of moderating the Atlantic season, and producing an unusual hurricanes on the Pacific coast (mostly affecting Mexico).

The great 1976 ice age was *proven* by leading climatologists of the day.
That you are buying into the AGW myth that the prediciton never occurred makes you a good little Orwellian.
So you won't engage on the past wrong predicitons of climatology and you think we are facing a runaway greenhouse.
That is puttingyou squarely in the religious fundie camp.

El Nino is a much studied phenomenon - it causes a lot of trouble around the Pacific. It is hard to predict - it has a cyclic behaviour, but is sometimes strong, sometimes weak. A lot of Australian farmers, and firefighters, would dearly love good predictions of when El Nino events would start and stop.

Murray Mitchell of NOAA, George Kukla of Columbia University,
Reid Bryson of U Wisconsin, National Academy of Sciences, 1975, Dr. James McQuigg of NOAA.
Yes, it is all urban myth to you climate fundies. Even if the inconveniece of history gets in theway.
Prior to that the climatologists of the 1930's *knew* the world was facing runaway heating. In the 1890's, it was ice.
Every 30 or 40 years people find the need for a new apocalypse scare.
The probelm with this one is that a lot of people who don't how to manage faith-based belief systems are caught up in it.
As I have stated before: AGW is a myth. It is no different than the Noah myth and other flood myths from early history. The prevalence and persistance of these are even in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales".
Somewhere as I write this, I bet a clever grad student is writing a thesis documenting the thread of apocalyptic stories and their life cycles throughout history.
The Earth has gone from ice free to completely enshrouded in ice.
Ice ages, by the way, are very bad for health. I am not sure why, except for a sort of perverse reactionary trait I see in all extremists, AGW believers would think climate should not only not change, but should change only in ways the philosopher kings dictate.

you've taken a list of names from the Newsweek article. Each one contributed an observation that the journalist cited in building up the case, but I can't see where any of them claimed an Ice Age was coming. And all NAS was prepared to say was:

"Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. "Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions."

I am plenty old. I was reading the first hand the climate doomsday promoters of that period first hand.
The scientists quoted then were the equivalent of climatologists today. History will show they will have had equal track records of accuracy.
The pitiful attempt to pretend I am just youngster and should sit quietly while you smart AGW believers drone on about the end of the world is par for the course in climate discussion. You guys have nothing so you rely on condescension and censorship is all you have.

masked an agendawherein poor nations organized and motivated by the International Left and its allies attempted to engender a massive transfer of wealth from rich capitalist "North" nations to poor import-substitution "South" nations, mainly by employing the "Group of 77" and other NGOs in the UN to use ECOSOC to serve as some sort of world legislature. Controls of the press and all sorts of ancillary agendas were also thrown into the mix. The project failed abysmally after a decade and a half of flimflammery and Sturm und Drang.

Now another UN agenda is attempting to impose carbon taxes on the biggest wealth-machine in the world, the American tax-payer. Unlike most other advanced industrial nations, the Americans pay their income taxes voluntarily and are not milked by VATs and other payroll taxes as much as Europeans, for example.

In their ceaseless hatred of capitalism and free enterprise, the highly-organized Left has taken on its new project to scare and buffalo American politicians to open the large honey-pot of the US budget to transfer wealth to countries emitting less CO2. Jacques Chirac recently said that the European Parliament and other mechanisms would soon impose tariffs and other penalties on the US if it does not comply with European standards.

Of course, European non-compliance with Kyoto and other posturings are all part of this game, including the exclusion of major polluters like the PRC and India from the same range of penalties.

Comparative advantage and international gamesmanship are more important than the actual science politically supported by [now] over 110 nations, most of which are per-capita polluters in the same range as the US.

The success of capitalism continues to grate these world-parliament wannabes. And the US economic engine is a constant rebuke to their silly economic dirigiste nostrums.

Our Thought For The Week comes from the Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman: "I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future."

That would be yours truly: the climate holocaust denier. I wrote last week about "global warming," or "cooling," or "climate change," or (the latest term) "climate disruption" -- for those parts of the world where the climate isn't really changing but you get an occasional blip: a warm day in winter or a flurry of snow in late April, or (for British readers) a summer's day where it rockets up to 58 and cloudy instead of being 54 and drizzling. As a result of my climate holocaust denial, I received a ton of letters along the lines of this one: